Welcome back to the Lancaster Bearwatch.

This is a wide-ranging, and brutally comprehensive survey on all ursine life in the Lancaster area. We do not, as some "critics" have inferred, "mess about" around here: we leave no rock salmon unturned.

Still don't believe us?

Have you been up in your loft, lately? Oh, so that vague, mysterious banging doesn't bother you, then? You can live with the thought that some an unknown being is living in your attic, rifling through your old smalls and wiping his furry arse on the copy of The Times from the day you were born? You can live with that, can you? You can?

What if I told you that it was nothing less than a Kodiak Bear awakening from his hibernation, due to the unseasonably warm weather we've been having of late?

 

Naturally, you'd tell me that I was wrong - there are no bears in your loft. And I'd have to concede, on this point, that I was wrong indeed. For that strange, unearthly catterwauling coming from up yonder was, in actual fact, the sound of one of our bearwatchers researching house-to-house. Do not be alarmed - he maintains that your place is completely bear-free. It is not, however, entirely researcher free - Our man has, apparently, grown to like it up there, and if you could find your way around to bringing him up a plate of milk and maybe a little fresh fish, he'd be happy as a sand boy.

Anyway, anon with the bears.

General Field-Marshall Sir Lazonby Biggers-Hats-Coxquomb of Alexandra Road, Skerton writes:-

"Yo, My Main Man,

"There's some beggar who works in my local shop. Funny old sort, never wears a vest, always telling me to be calm and put the gun down, that sort of thing, anyway, I have lately come to regard him as a sort of informant. He says that he knows about a big stash of bears out at the old Pontin's Holiday Camp at Heysham. He says that the Bears are being kept there until they can be assimilated into the local community, whereafter they will be given jobs, residences, offices in local government, that sort of thing. Can this really be the case?

"Yours Sincerely,

"General Field-Marshall Sir Lazonby Biggers-Hats-Coxquomb, retd. (Mrs)"

Well, General (if you'll pardon our informal tone), we have reason to believe that your "source" is mistaken: There is no bear colony at Pontins, as has been widely (not to mention rudely) rumoured for many years now. The Bears were moved to the Broadway Hotel, Morecambe in the mid-1980s when they complained about their barberous incarceration, and the sub-standard quality of family entertainment available to them. Many of these "Old Time" bears, as they became known have now, sadly, passed on, but their desendants live on in the area. Only three years ago, several of them were elected to the City Council.

 

Keep on Bearwatching, folks - it's not a jungle out there.

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